


Something So Tragic About You (Something So Magic About You)

by peopleinherearewaiting



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Mental Breakdown, So much angst, thasmin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:54:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22910584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peopleinherearewaiting/pseuds/peopleinherearewaiting
Summary: "The gang stared in horror as the man spoke, before turning to look at the Doctor. Her face seemed emotionless and Yaz would have thought that she hadn’t heard anything that had been said if it weren’t for the whiteness of her knuckles as she clenched and unclenched her fists. She didn’t say anything, though. Yaz assumed she didn’t know where to start."
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 15
Kudos: 91





	Something So Tragic About You (Something So Magic About You)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so much to Rachel (CoffeeAndArrows) for encouraging me and beta-ing this for me! :)
> 
> The title is from From Eden by Hozier :) Please be aware that this is very angsty, TWs for depression, breakdowns, extremely vague reference to suicidal thoughts so be safe!!
> 
> I want to improve my writing so constructive criticism is really appreciated!

Ryan turned to look at the group, his expression uneasy. “I know you said this was a peaceful planet, but those guys with guns aren’t looking too friendly. Maybe we should get out of here.”

The Doctor shook her head. “Nah, I’m sure they’re harmless,” she replied, shooting Ryan a reassuring smile. “We’ve not done anything wrong yet, have we, fam?”

Yaz looked over at Ryan. He shrugged. 

The Doctor had brought her friends to the planet of Lurrun when Yaz had asked if there was anywhere in the universe that was steampunk **.** After a few hours of exploring the entertainment complex they had landed inside, the Doctor had been unable to resist having a look at the inner workings of the building. That was how the fam had ended up trapped in a hot, noisy corridor with a group of gun-toting men headed towards them.

Yaz eyed the approaching group warily. “I don’t know, they look pretty angry, Doctor. Leaving now might not be a bad idea.”

“Maybe we should try talking to them,” the Doctor suggested, clearly determined to get to the bottom of the matter. “Find out what they’re after, and all.” She turned to face the rapidly approaching group.

“Hiya,” she said, “I’m the Doctor and these are my friends. Can we help you lot with anything?”

Yaz’s stomach clenched. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“Oh, we know who you are, Doctor,” the man stood in the front of the group said. “We’ve been waiting a long time for you to come back to Lurrun. You look a little different to the last time, though.” He turned, smirking, to his companions who were snickering behind him.

The Doctor’s forehead furrowed as she looked back at the man in confusion. “But I’ve never visited this planet before–” She paled, and the air seemed to shift around them. Her eyes were fixed on the group in front of them, realisation slowly dawning on her features. “Oh, no,” she whispered, breathing out shakily. “I’m so sorry–”

“We don’t want your apologies,” the leader said curtly. “We’ve been waiting for the day when you would return. We have been tracking you as you spread chaos through our solar system and others, waiting to make you pay for what you took from us. Turns out we didn’t have to wait that long.” The group was starting to get riled up, the men’s fists tightening on their rifles.

“Doctor, what’s he talking about?” asked Graham, looking back and forth between the Doctor and the group in confusion. 

The Doctor paused, uncertain. “There was a war on a neighbouring planet,” she started to explain, “a brutal one. I tried to stop the fighting by drawing some of the soldiers here away from their own planet, but their engines malfunctioned and the ship exploded on landing. People died.” The Doctor closed her eyes and shuddered almost imperceptibly. Yaz wondered if she was reliving that moment, and resisted the urge to reach out.

“You lured murderous soldiers to our planet and then left as soon as they were dead!” another member of the group exploded. “Five hundred innocent people died because of your plan and then you disappeared while we were left to look for survivors in the rubble. You’re no doctor, you destroy everything you touch.”

The gang stared in horror as the man spoke, before turning to look at the Doctor. Her face seemed emotionless and Yaz would have thought that she hadn’t heard anything that had been said if it weren’t for the whiteness of her knuckles as she clenched and unclenched her fists. She didn’t say anything, though. Yaz assumed she didn’t know where to start.

“My son was six years old when he died. It should have been you.”

The Doctor didn’t even look up as the man spoke. Her head stayed bowed, her body unmoving. The group were beginning to get annoyed at the Doctor’s lack of reaction to them, shuffling and muttering angrily amongst themselves.

“Doctor?” Ryan asked, looking for an explanation, a look of reassurance, or the beginnings of an escape plan. But the Doctor remained still and silent, the slight twitching of her fists the only tell that something was wrong. Very wrong.

The leader at the front of the group frowned. “This will be too easy,” he said. “I’d hoped that there would be at least a bit of a fight…”

Yaz swallowed nervously. It was becoming clear that the men wanted vengeance and that only the Doctor’s death would do. “Hold on,” she tried, her voice shaky, “surely a whole group of you executing her makes you no better than whatever happened before.”

“We don’t care about fairness or justice, love,” the man replied, looking Yaz up and down with disdain. “We want revenge and we want to stop her from playing God and destroying lives across the universe.”

Yaz was about to counter with some examples of how much good the Doctor had done when she heard a thud behind her and turned to see the Doctor in a crumpled heap on the floor. Yaz rushed over to her and was surprised to see she was still conscious, but when she called her name or touched her arm the Doctor didn’t react at all. Yaz took a deep breath and tried to keep the panic at bay. She had to fight it–there were no other options–but at the same time she had never seen the Doctor like this, and it felt _wrong_. The person she and the boys knew always had at least three plans on the go and would never lose hope, nor would she let them lose hope.

She turned back to the group and pointed at the Doctor. "Look at her!” she shouted. “She's completely defenceless. Are you really going to kill her like this?" 

“The people we lost didn’t even have the chance to fight for their lives,” the leader argued. “If she can’t stand up and face this punishment head-on, then this death is no more than what she deserves.”

“And what about us?” Yaz tried again. “You can’t think that we’ll willingly let you kill the Doctor,” she said, looking over at Ryan and Graham who nodded supportively. “You’ll have to go through us.” She crossed her arms, face set, and moved to stand defensively in front of the Doctor, shielding her from the group. The boys joined her, looking a bit less confident but determined to save the Doctor nonetheless.

The ringleader sighed. “We have no wish to kill you, you have not committed any sort of crime against us. If you step aside now, we will spare you.”

“Fat chance,” replied Ryan. “We won’t see our friend killed.”

“Then you leave us no alternative,” the man said. The group raised their weapons. The fam looked at each other and then around the corridor, weighing their very few options. There was no time to make a plan.

“Ready, fire!”

Immediately, Yaz sprung forward, pushing the leader’s gun up so it hit the metal pipes running overhead. The pipes burst, jets of steam filling the corridor. Meanwhile, Ryan and Graham had grabbed the Doctor under her arms and were hauling her away along the corridor. Yaz quickly grabbed a gun that had fallen to the floor in the chaos and followed the boys, periodically shooting at the pipes to cloud the corridor.

Graham was about to pull open the door when Ryan let out a yell and fell to the ground, pulling the still unresponsive Doctor down with him.

“Ryan!” Yaz shouted, running over to him. “What happened?”

“My leg,” he moaned, “I’ve been shot.”

Yaz’s heart dropped like a sack of stones. With Ryan hurt and the Doctor unable to function, their chances of getting out of the situation alive were decreasing. 

“Graham, can you help Ryan out of here and I’ll take the Doctor,” Yaz ordered. “The TARDIS isn’t too far now, we can make it.” She summoned up every last bit of optimism and energy, but her heart was still pounding in her chest, and the lack of physical response from the Doctor as Yaz hoisted her arm over her shoulder was making her insides tighten painfully.

Slowly, the gang made their way back outside **.** Yaz glanced behind them every so often to see if they were being followed, but they seemed to have shaken off the group in the steamed-up corridor.

Once back at the TARDIS, Yaz pulled out the key that she knew was hanging on a string around the Doctor’s neck and let them into the blue box. She dumped the Timelord unceremoniously in the console room and turned her attention to Ryan who was getting paler as he fought against the blood loss and pain.

“Put pressure on his leg, use a towel or a coat or something,” Yaz directed Graham. She moved back to the Doctor, shaking her leg as she fought back tears. “Please, Doctor, we need you. Ryan needs you.” Her voice cracked, but the Doctor was still unreachable, completely detached from the events unfolding around her. Yaz sighed. She looked around the console room desperately, trying to come up with a way to save her friend’s life. Just as she was debating knocking Ryan out and attempting to cauterise the wound, the TARDIS beeped and lit up a certain area of the console.

She ran over to the console and sighed in relief as she saw a box full of medical supplies pop open next to the custard cream dispenser. Grabbing an armful of bandages, she made her way back to Graham and Ryan.

“Can you hold this to the wound and then help me lift his leg so I can check for an exit wound, please?” Yaz asked, handing Graham a wad of bandages. Ryan moaned as the pair lifted his leg. “Lie down, Ryan,” Yaz urged him. “It’ll be alright.”

“There’s no exit wound,” she said, turning back to Graham. She’d had to take a first aid course as part of her police training, but nothing had prepared her for this. “Keep applying pressure and keep his leg elevated. I’ll try to get us back to Sheffield, to the hospital if I can.”

“Hold on, you can fly the TARDIS?” Graham asked, looking up at her in confusion.

“I know the basics,” Yaz replied. “Besides, we’ve not got any other options,” she continued looking over at where the Doctor was huddled on the floor.

She ran over to the console again, looking up at the central column beseechingly. “It’s just you and me now,” she whispered. She pushed a few buttons before sticking her hand into the TARDIS’s neural network. She started to visualise the A&E department that she had visited when she broke her leg as a kid, and then more frequently later on when she had joined the force. Once she had a clear image in her mind, she pulled a lever and the TARDIS came to life.

Moments later, the whirring of the engines stopped. Yaz ran to the door and yanked it open, shouting in relief to see that they were in the hospital car park.

“Okay,” she said as she turned to Graham again, “I’ll leave you to take Ryan into the hospital. You’ll have to make up some story to explain what happened, but he should be okay now.”

“What are you going to do, Yaz?” he asked as he started to lift Ryan to his feet.

Yaz sighed. “I’m going to deal with the Doctor.”

* * *

The quiet inside of the TARDIS was deafening. With the boys gone, Yaz and the Doctor were left alone inside the police box. Yaz walked over to the Doctor, dropping to her knee in front of her and gently reaching for her arm.

“Doctor?” Yaz asked softly, sliding her hand into the Doctor’s. “Can you hear me?” The Doctor made no move to reply to Yaz but she pushed on anyway. “Can you squeeze my hand for me?” To Yaz’s surprise, she felt the Doctor’s fingers flutter slightly inside of hers. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to start with. It would have to do.

“Alright, I’ll get us somewhere safe and quiet,” Yaz said, withdrawing her hand from the Doctor’s and heading back to the console. Following the same routine as before, this time she visualised a planet that the Doctor had taken the gang to a few months ago. A tranquil planet covered in forests that was uninhabited by intelligent life forms. Yaz hoped that the calming noises of the forest and the space to think and process would help the Doctor.

Once they had landed, Yaz lifted the Doctor to her feet, feeling relieved when she realised that the Doctor was supporting her own weight a bit more than before. She slowly guided the Doctor outside and into a clearing in the forest before settling them both down on the forest floor. Yaz didn’t want to push, she would let the Doctor speak when she was ready. Instead, she let herself get lost in her own thoughts, trying to make sense of the last few hours.

For the Doctor to be quiet and withdrawn was odd enough, but for her to shut down completely would have been unthinkable before, and was terrifying now. Yaz thought back to the words of the vengeful men, their accusations that the Doctor was a destroyer, a killer. Yaz shuddered. The Doctor she knew and loved did everything she could to save as many lives as possible, but then it was never possible to save everybody all the time. Yaz had witnessed that herself, albeit on a much smaller scale, when she became a police officer. How much death had the Doctor witnessed throughout her life? And how many of those deaths did she blame herself for?

The more Yaz thought, the more she realised that the Doctor must have been hurting for a very long time. Tears glistened in her eyes as she told herself that she should have realised earlier the amount of pain the Doctor carried with her. The gang had been happy to accompany the Doctor on adventures and follow her orders, but they had never challenged or questioned her. They had never truly seen her. 

With a start, Yaz realised that she and the Doctor were in a very similar situation to the one she had been in when she was sixteen. This time, the Doctor was the one hurting and she was the one trying to make it better. And they had swapped a road in Sheffield for a forest on a distant planet. 

She exhaled shakily, not quite sure what to make of that thought, but before she could pursue it any further she noticed that the Doctor was slowly beginning to move. Yaz made sure to stay still and keep looking forward, giving the Doctor time to come back to her senses and regain control of her body. 

Eventually, the Doctor turned to face her. She held her breath.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

The words hung in the air between them, and Yaz stifled a gasp, not wanting to make the Doctor clam up or feel judged. Instead, she sat quietly, waiting for the Doctor to continue and pretending like she hadn’t felt the Doctor’s words like a punch in the gut.

“I’ve lost so many people, I’ve seen too many deaths. I’ve been the cause of a lot of them,” the Doctor said quietly. “I’m not a good person, Yaz. I don’t know how to talk about this, and I don’t _want_ to talk about this, because I’m afraid that you’ll see me how I see myself.”

At that, Yaz turned to look at the Doctor. She saw a tear roll down the Timelord’s cheek before she turned her head away in shame, tucking her chin into her shoulder and hunching over with the weight of the emotion. Yaz’s heart twisted painfully.

“Doctor, look at me,” she instructed, placing a hand on the Doctor’s arm. After another minute of ashamed silence, the Doctor turned her face back to Yaz, but she was still afraid to meet her eye. Slowly, so as not to startle her, Yaz reached out a hand to cup the Doctor’s cheek, gently wiping a tear away and turning the Doctor’s head slightly so she had to meet her eyes.

“Listen to me carefully,” Yaz said, thumb tracing across her skin, hoping she could provide some kind of comfort to the Doctor. “I told you once, a while back, that you were the best person I’d ever met. I meant it. And I still mean it, and it won’t change, no matter what you choose to tell me. You truly are an incredible person, and my life is better for having you in it.”

“Yeah, well, you might change your mind after this,” the Doctor warned. Yaz shook her head slightly but didn’t speak, giving the Doctor space to find her words. This was clearly hard for her, but they had all the time in the world. Yaz could wait.

“I’m a Timelord from the planet Gallifrey,” she started hesitantly. “I thought I was the last of my kind until we saw the Master a few weeks ago. There was a great war between the Timelords and the Daleks and I was only able to stop it by wiping both species out. I managed to go back and save Gallifrey, but the Master destroyed it again. My home is a wasteland.” 

Yaz swallowed, biting her tongue. She wanted to offer some reassurance, but there was nothing she could say. She needed to let the Doctor speak.

The Doctor paused, taking a shuddering breath before speaking again. “I’ve spent my life travelling around the universe. You, Graham, and Ryan aren’t the first humans I’ve travelled with, either. So many of them died or had their lives destroyed because they travelled with me. After Bill died, I decided I didn’t want to travel with humans again. I couldn’t do that to more people; I couldn’t lose anyone else. But I felt so alone and you guys wanted all of it. It was so selfish of me to take you with me, but I don’t know what I would do without you. Any of you could have died today and it would have been all my fault. I don’t know what I would ever do if I lost you, Yaz.”

By the time she had finished speaking, the Doctor had tears streaming down her face and her shoulders were shuddering. Yaz squeezed the Doctor’s arm in comfort and the Doctor reached up to grab her hand, holding onto it desperately.

“Please, don’t leave me alone,” she pleaded. “I’m not sure I’d survive it.”

Yaz held the Doctor tightly as she cried, letting her express what could well be decades of pent up emotion. It was agonising to see her in this state, the woman who was usually the epitome of energy and optimism reduced to tears on the forest floor. All she had ever wanted was to fix things, to help people, and to make things better. None of this was her fault.

As the Doctor regained her composure, Yaz started to speak. 

“You have experienced so much, Doctor. You have had way more than your fair share of death and pain, and yet you keep seeking out people in need of help, even when the odds aren’t on their side. You are _incredible_ , and you may not believe me, but I’ll be here to remind you of that. You’ve spent so long pushing down your emotions and it just caught up to you. It’s going to hurt. But this moment, when you want to run away from everyone, to give up, is just that–a moment.” While she spoke, Yaz rubbed soothing circles on the Doctor’s hand, feeling relieved as she saw the Doctor grow calmer beside her.

The Doctor took a shaky breath and wiped the remains of her tear tracks away. “How are you this wise, Yasmin Khan?” she asked, looking at the young woman with gratitude and admiration.

“I’ve been where you are,” Yaz replied, smiling sadly. “It gets better.”

After a few more minutes of sitting quietly and enjoying the sounds of the wind whistling through the trees, the two women stood and headed back to the TARDIS. Yaz headed straight to the custard cream dispenser and got a handful to give to the Doctor, knowing full well that she would be low on energy after the day’s events. Biting into one herself, she headed back to the centre console, shooing the Doctor away to sit down on the stairs.

“You need to take it slow,” she ordered. “You were catatonic for a couple of hours and you probably feel pretty shaky right now. Give yourself a break for a little while, please.”

For once, the Doctor didn’t try to assert that she was fine and back to normal. Instead, she nodded quietly at Yaz and kept to the stairs as Yaz flew them back to Sheffield. Yaz could still see the pain in her eyes and the tightness of her jaw, but she took the fact that the Doctor hadn’t tried to brush off her breakdown as progress.

When they landed back in the hospital car park, the Doctor rose and walked slowly over to Yaz.

“I am so proud of you,” she said, reaching out to touch her arms. “You got everyone out of that situation alive and helped us all as best as you could. You really are amazing, Yaz. And clearly the TARDIS thinks so, too. It’s not often that she’s so happy to let someone else fly her.”

Yaz chuckled, tears in her eyes. “I was just doing what you would do, Doctor,” she replied. “Although I do think my landings are more accurate than yours…”

The Doctor laughed and Yaz’s heart burst at the sound. “Don’t push it,” she said, squeezing Yaz’s arms before letting go. 

“But Yaz, thank you.”

* * *

A short while later, Ryan and Graham arrived back at the TARDIS. Yaz had already given the Doctor a reminder of the day’s events since everything was still foggy in her mind. She had avoided mentioning what the men had said, knowing that it could trigger another breakdown, but she was unable to do anything more than offer reassurances when the Doctor’s face crumpled as she heard about Ryan getting shot.

The boys stopped just over the threshold, eyeing the Doctor carefully. Yaz could read the relief on their faces to see the Doctor once again alert, but she also didn’t miss their twin intakes of breath as they saw the depth of emotion in the Doctor’s eyes, the shakiness of her breath, and the tightness of her shoulders for the first time.

Yaz turned back to look at the Doctor, noticing her hesitancy to get any closer to Ryan. Her head was bowed again, and Yaz was close enough to see her hands shaking slightly. She could almost feel the waves of shame and guilt rolling off of her.

Yaz considered stepping closer and taking her hand, but she decided that the Doctor needed to confront her emotions herself this time and that offering her an out wouldn’t really be helping her.

After another tense minute, the Doctor lifted her chin slightly and took a shaky breath.

“I’m so sorry, Ryan,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. 

Her eyes filled with tears again, and she sniffed as a single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. Yaz sucked in a breath behind her; she almost hadn’t expected the Doctor to leave her walls down long enough for Ryan and Graham to see her pain. While it hurt her incredibly to see so much suffering weighing on her friend, she was impressed by the effort the Doctor was making to not shut herself off again.

“I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me, if you want me to disappear. I promised you all I would protect you and clearly I’m not capable of doing that.” She stopped, running out of words to express the whirlpool of emotions trapped inside her head. Instead, she went back to staring at the floor, twisting and squeezing her fingers nervously.

Ryan looked over to Yaz who gave him a small smile and nodded slightly. Using his hospital-issue crutches, he slowly made his way over to the Doctor and stopped just in front of her. Leaning forward, he took her hand, not missing the surprised quiver than ran through her body. Patiently, he waited for her to look up and meet his eyes.

“I forgive you,” he said simply. 

The change on the Doctor’s face was immediate. He could see the relief colouring her eyes, and the corners of her mouth tugged up into a small, but definitely there, smile.

“Thanks, Ryan,” she said quietly, squeezing his hand slightly. 

Over the Doctor’s shoulder, Yaz smiled at him warmly, proud of the man she had come to consider a brother.

When the moment passed, Ryan turned to go stand next to Graham, the older man clapping him on the shoulder gently. The Doctor took a step back herself so that she was standing with Yaz again **,** and reached out for the younger woman’s hand, taking a deep breath as she tried to gather the strength and courage to say what she needed to.

“I want to do better,” she started hesitantly, still struggling to make eye contact. “But I need you guys to challenge me, to stand up to me if you think I’m shutting myself off again. I can’t promise that this won’t happen again, and I clearly can’t guarantee that I can keep you all safe. So if you do decide to leave this time, I won’t hold it against you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Yaz replied without hesitation, the boys nodding in agreement. “And we can do that for you. I’ll be here for you as long as you’ll have me.”

With Yaz’s words, something changed in the Doctor’s eyes. She looked lighter and freer than before. Turning to face Yaz, she pulled her into a long, tight hug, fingers curling into the fabric on the shoulders of Yaz’s jacket. As the Doctor wrapped her arms tightly around her friend, she softly mumbled into her shoulder.

“You saved me.”


End file.
